In any case, the first prototype of the first phase of the “Search, Learn, Share” project is now ready for testing. So far it doesn’t do much, but it does accomplish these two things:

It presents users with this question: “What Do You Want To Learn?”

It uses their input to bring back a variety of resources, including websites, books, news articles, images, and video. (I’m focusing on Google’s specialized search tools for the prototype, and sadly Scholar has no API, so scholarly articles cannot be pulled in… yet.)

In the future it will also allow users to save, annotate, and share their searches (with the option to save related searches into “projects” and the option to subscribe to updates from a particular search) and their individual results (in a manner much like other social bookmarking serivices – in fact, I’m hoping for some serious integration). There’s other features I have planned, but that’s the gist of it… in a nutshell. ;)

At this point, this simple first phase prototype is ready for testing. Please let me know what you think – and what you’d like to see.

Version .01 – A tabbed UI that works only in Internet Explorer.*Version .03 – A “single page” UI that works in any browser.

*I include this here because I think I might actually like the tabs better. What do you think?

I look forward to your feedback… and I hope some of you might even find the tool at this stage helpful for yourself or for your students.

This entry was posted by Mark Wagner, Ph.D.
on Thursday, November 27th, 2008 at 12:58 am and is filed under ET&L, Search Learn Share.
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4 Responses to “Search, Learn, Share (Phase 1)”

It might be beneficial to have the .01 version be browser neutral. Many, many folks use Firefox rather than IE. Even on Macs, Firefox is heavily used. Also, how does this search differ (to the better of course) from Boolean searches?

Hey, Sharon. Thanks for your comment. One of the prime requirements I had for this project was that it run in Firefox. But the coder developed in IE first. After seeing the version .01, it was discarded for the new UI, which eventually wound up working in Firefox, as per the specs. But in retrospect, I kinda liked the tabed UI in .01, so I included it here for people to try (if they can).

And just like a Google search, it doesn’t *differ* from Boolean searches. It’s mearly an option to use Boolean searches if you like, just as it would be using Google (or most other search engines). In fact, this is entirely powered by Google… it draws on the open Google APIs to pull back the various kinds of results.

[...] New technologies to use in the classroom New tools are being created for harnessing the internet and all of the information available on it.Â One new tool is being created by Dr. Mark Wagner.Â The web tool is in development and will allow users to search on a topic they want to learn about – results will include many different resources (that are acceptable for writing a research paper) – even video and images.Â Users will be able to create an annotated bibliography and even share their search with friends, fellow students, and/or teachers.Â If you are interested, you can go to his blogÂ and test the first phase of the project.Â He is asking for feedback and suggestions. [...]